News versus Noise: CES Part 1

So what else has emerged from the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this week?

The Greening of Notebooks
Sony introduced not one but four new Vaio notebooks with the ‘w’ series catching our eye with its green-tinted plastic case being made of 23% recycled CDs and the carrying case is made of recycled plastic bottles. Why not call it the ‘r’ series for recycled?

Too Long In Labour?
Plastic Logic finally launched its Que e-reader and may prove to be an oxymoron. This has had a longer gesticulation period than an elephant! Will it succeed in what is now a very crowed market of ‘lookie likies’ and even with all its initial super hype is it a case of being always a bridesmaid. Since it offered so much the world has moved on and one would seriously have to question why this when we have tablets, duo screen devices and so much more better value all around us.

WoW at a WoW Price
Dell's Adamo XPS being only 9.9mm thick is now being billed as the world's thinnest laptop and is even thinner than many mobiles! It also opens to sits up, with the keyboard ergonomically tilted to offer a better typing angle. Its 13.4” LED widescreen offers 1366 x 768 pixels but the interesting design element is that motherboard and 128GB solid-state drive are behind the screen, not beneath the keyboard. We thick this could be thinking itself a future tablet but being this thin and only 1.44kg, it may not be the lightest around but it offers much to think about. However it suffers one major drawback in that it will cost you £1,750.

A Tablet For All Seasons
Notion Ink’s Android “smartpad” which claims to support full HD video playback, WiFi, Bluetooth and use the Pixel Qi transflective 10” 1024 x 600 Pixel display a 3-megapixel autofocus camera with video 16GB or 32GB of SSD. Interesetingly it even has a water sensor! The screen can be viewed as a regular LCD, or outdoors in either transflective mode with reduced color vibrancy or at a flick in fully reflective 64-level grayscale mode. The battery life is claimed to be 48hrs standby, 8hrs of HD video playback and 16hrs of internet surfing over WiFi. Price is not know but expected to be around $300.

Lets Get Social?
The Copia reader joins the usual eInk suspects but offers not one but a group of readers joined together by a social networking and reader support. So the question is whether the network pulls is strong enough to tie the devices to the readers or is just a gimmick that is only as good as the network of users. Why create a social network around a platform this way it doesn’t make sense,perhaps they should have looked at the track record of BookRabbit, perhaps they just want to sell tin, but perhaps they don’t know what the want to be when the grow up.